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Opinion: Is Localism God’s Gift to Surfing?

“The adult who surfs like a child gets treated like a child.”

Take the example of a kid growing up at a beach somewhere. It’s a crowded beach and he is a kook when he starts. He gets burned a lot, snaked a lot, and must be content with catching the scraps. He is being discriminated against, in part because of his age but mostly because of his skill level. As he gets older and spends more time in the lineup, he inevitably gets better at surfing and begins to earn the attention of other surfers from the community. This means he gets more waves and the more waves he gets the better at surfing he becomes. This is the sunny side of localism. Those early years as he got better at the craft and slowly made his way up the pecking order weren’t easy but what the hell. He’s a kid, who gives a fuck. Not him. He understands his place in the world. He knows that the kid always yields to the adult, and so he gets on with it, getting older, getting better, getting his time up in the lineup.

But the adult sees things differently. He takes up surfing at 20, whereby he starts out at the skill level of a kid, and is treated as such; routinely burned, snaked and disrespected. The adult objects to this because he is not a kid anymore. He has rights, or so he thinks. But he does not. He has the rights of a kid kook and that’s localism. The adult who surfs like a child gets treated like a child. The adults who surfs like an adult – i.e rips to some degree – gets treated as an adult. He is of a skill level that deserves respect. He has made the required sacrifices in life to keep up his game, which ain’t easy. Anyone who surfs good into their adult years has made sacrifices and should be respected for that. Surfing requires you to give up a lot. By such time said surfer will also no doubt be aware of the fact that each time you arrive at a new spot, you need to spend some time observing the lay of the land, acknowledging the locals are in the lineup, showing patience, respect, humility, and then making sure to rip the back out of the ones you do get. Whether you like it or not, localism is a universal presence in our culture. It is at every wave around the world where there’s a surfing community. As a publication, we could not stop it even if we wanted to and are not here to necessarily campaign against it (many of our readers are ‘locals’ at one spot or another). Alls we can do is show you a way through it.

In a good lineup, a good surfer will get respect and not get burned, as long as he respects the rules and gives up the occasional wave. Locals who surf like kids but burn people who surf better than them, and who’ve shown respect, are the enemy of us all. You give localism a bad name and you suck.

So if you don’t surf good and haven’t put much time in at the spot, expected to get treated like a kid. Don’t cry foul. The world is not fair, never has been. Don’t hate the players, hate the game, kook.

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